Trip Report: DrupalCon 2017

May 9th, 2017

DrupalCon is many things to many people. For me, this year’s North America DrupalCon in Baltimore was a chance to connect with my remote co-workers in the same place, help share knowledge while learning things myself, and celebrate all the things that Drupal makes possible.

The Drupal 8 with React.js and Waterwheel Training

Our first big event was “API First Drupal 8 with React.js and Waterwheel Training”, where Web Chef Luke Herrington took a canonical JavaScript application—a todo list built with React—and hooked it up to Drupal 8 through a new JavaScript library called Waterwheel.js. Todos were stored in a headless Drupal site via the JSON API module, and we even provided a login page and a like button for todos. Although we had a small army of Web Chefs available to help, Luke had created such a great training that our extra support wasn’t needed, and the attendees were really able to dive deep into how everything worked.

Future of the CMS: Decoupled

“I’ve completely rewritten my talk,” said Todd, the Four Kitchens CEO, at the team dinner on Monday night. I’ve seen him give this talk before but this declaration really piqued my curiosity.

There were a lot of talks at DrupalCon about the “how” of decoupling, but Todd’s revised talk is a great summary of the “why”. In it, Todd talks about the differences between CMSes being “content management systems” versus “website management systems” and about how that content can be managed so that it is reuseable on all categories of devices. Because the technology is always changing, it’s a talk he rewrites at least once a year, and I’m glad I got to see this version of the 2017 talk when I did.

Supercharge Your Next Web App with Electron

To show off his work in Electron, Web Chef James Todd brought two drawing robots to DrupalCon that he set up in our booth. Each machine was powered by RoboPaint, a packaged-up web app. I’ve been curious about Electron for a while, and when I learned that James was giving a talk on the subject I immediately reached out to help him build his slide deck so that I could learn more. His presentation was thorough and entertaining, and he encouraged people to “experiment and play with it, it’ll be fun”.

Drinks with a Mission

The Drupal community believes that open source technology has the power to improve the lives of others, so instead of the usual DrupalCon party, this year, Four Kitchens teamed up with Kalamuna and Manatí to host “Drinks with a Mission”.

We started the night by asking, “If you had a magic wand that would fix a problem, what problems would you fix?” Answers were written down on post-it notes, which were then sorted into groupings, and finally assigned to teams. Each team took their topic, such as How to Better Connect with Nature, and had to come up with solutions to the topic problem. Great ideas can begin in unexpected places, and the ensuing solutions were as thoughtful as they were hilarious.

Taking the Train Home

In the last few years I’ve started to become enamored with the concept of “taking the train”. So at the end of DrupalCon I got my wish, and instead of flying, I spent an entire day traveling by rail: from Baltimore, through Philadelphia’s gorgeous train station, and then on to home in the middle of Pennsylvania.